dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaLog-normal statistics in e-mail communication patterns
| Authors | Daniel B. Stouffer, R. Dean Malmgren, Luis A. N. Amaral |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0605027 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0605027 |
Abstract
Following up on Barabasi's recent letter to Nature [435, 207--211 (2005)], we systematically investigate the time series of e-mail usage for 3,188 users at a university. We focus on two quantities for each user: the time interval between consecutively sent e-mails (interevent time), and the time interval between when a user sends an e-mail and when a recipient sends an e-mail back to the original sender (waiting time). We perform a standard Bayesian model selection analysis that demonstrates that the interevent times are well-described by a single log-normal while the waiting times are better described by the superposition of two log-normals. Our analysis rejects the possibility that either measure could be described by truncated power-law distributions with exponent $\alpha \simeq 1$. We also critically evaluate the priority queuing model proposed by Barab\'asi to describe the distribution of the waiting times. We show that neither the assumptions nor the predictions of the model are plausible, and conclude that a theoretical description of human e-mail communication patterns remains an open problem.
{
"annotation_id": "4f9445c1-6760-4b16-a413-960624e5be14",
"date_created": "2026-03-02T18:01:07.782000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:01:07.782000Z",
"file_hash": "13d159fa2b5231ba66e1d13a0547a006a5b059dff5a0557c75d3ee9395172141",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "Following up on Barabasi\u0027s recent letter to Nature [435, 207--211 (2005)], we\nsystematically investigate the time series of e-mail usage for 3,188 users at a\nuniversity. We focus on two quantities for each user: the time interval between\nconsecutively sent e-mails (interevent time), and the time interval between\nwhen a user sends an e-mail and when a recipient sends an e-mail back to the\noriginal sender (waiting time). We perform a standard Bayesian model selection\nanalysis that demonstrates that the interevent times are well-described by a\nsingle log-normal while the waiting times are better described by the\nsuperposition of two log-normals. Our analysis rejects the possibility that\neither measure could be described by truncated power-law distributions with\nexponent $\\alpha \\simeq 1$. We also critically evaluate the priority queuing\nmodel proposed by Barab\\\u0027asi to describe the distribution of the waiting times.\nWe show that neither the assumptions nor the predictions of the model are\nplausible, and conclude that a theoretical description of human e-mail\ncommunication patterns remains an open problem.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0605027",
"authors": [
"Daniel B. Stouffer",
"R. Dean Malmgren",
"Luis A. N. Amaral"
],
"categories": [
"physics.data-an",
"physics.comp-ph",
"physics.soc-ph"
],
"title": "Log-normal statistics in e-mail communication patterns",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0605027"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "ab33cec0-bc64-4062-bdeb-35305f4c2676",
"id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}